OTT Challenges
Content providers know the differences between IPTV and OTT well. I would like to talk about how these differences affect video delivery.
OTT (Over the Top) means that the service is not provided by the one who provides the communication channel. The peculiarity of video delivery using OTT is that the operator providing the service cannot control the communication channel through which this video is delivered. In the case of IPTV, whose services are provided only through a manageable network with guaranteed QoS, the bitrate will be 3–5 times higher than in the case of OTT. Therefore, the OTT content provider is severely limiting itself technologically — at least it used to be so, but now the situation is changing.
If a customer is used to working with fixed communication channels, the use of OTT raises many questions at once, which boil down to one: who and how will guarantee the security of the channel and the quality of the content delivered through it? OTT is the transition from guaranteed service quality to probabilistic quality. That is, we cannot be sure how the service will be provided, but we can do our best to improve the quality of the delivery. And it turns out to be much cheaper than IPTV. Rejecting a guaranteed communication channel in favor of a probabilistic communication channel drastically reduces the cost of the service. This is the main advantage of OTT and why many people prefer it.
Using OTT services necessitates an automatic adjustment of the quality of content delivery to the capabilities of the subscriber. A subscriber with excellent Internet speed and a huge TV set needs the highest quality possible; a subscriber with a low Internet speed will, in the same way, should be given the highest quality possible for his device. If in the case of IPTV the number of devices on the network is very limited, then in the case of OTT we have to deal with a large variety of devices.
This is a multi-bitrate delivery, and in order for it to work well, inevitably there is a big delay in broadcast. Your neighbors watch the football team scoring a goal, and nothing is happening yet at your device, although you are watching the same source. Therefore, the main tasks of OTT are the presence of multi-bitrate delivery with low latency. This is a real technological challenge.
Our company Flussonic came up with the optimal solution for multi-bitrate streaming for TV companies and streaming services. For example, we helped StreamGroup and PowerNet with a multi-bitrate delivery solution, which helps to deliver the best quality video to every source possible, from a smartphone screen to a TV set. So the quality is adapting to customer’s capabilities, giving them the best possible quality of service.
